Social entrepreneurship: business as a vehicle for change

Do a quick search for global social enterprises and you’ll find international eyeglass sensation Warby Parker and Tom’s. The list of global social enterprises will both exhaust and astound you.

Through any number of social, economic and cultural factors, many of us have faced a binary decision about our careers: make money or do good. The underlying belief being that the two cannot co-exist.

It’s not difficult to understand why. Since the 1970s, business has been built on a foundation of free market competitiveness and prioritizing self-success. Contrast that with the non-profit world where those who are motivated by social good have often being scorned for allowing commercial motivations to creep in.

But by the early 2000s, a movement called social entrepreneurship started to reject the notion that doing good and making money need to be mutually exclusive. It’s taken awhile, but this new business model is officially hitting its stride.

According to the Government of Nova Scotia’s Social Enterprise Framework, released in April 2017, social enterprise accounts for about $83 million in wages and salaries in Nova Scotia and, in 2013, generated $127 million in the sale of goods and services across the province.

Social entrepreneurs operate businesses called social enterprises. In The Art of Social Enterprise (a great resource on this topic) authors Carl Frankel and Allen Bromberger describe social enterprises as businesses that “…combine for-profit revenue-generation strategies with the non-profit’s commitment to solving social problems.”

Carving out a new economic space doesn’t come without its challenges. Having worked as a social entrepreneur for five years and having engaged in countless discussions with other social entrepreneurs, there’s some real-talk I want to share with you if you really want to support this sector.

1. Understand this isn’t business-as-usual.

Social entrepreneurs need you to know that the way they’re approaching business doesn’t fit the traditional mold. The “way we do it” isn’t the way social entrepreneurs want to do it – in fact, breaking free from that is likely to be a primary motivator.

If you really want to help, bring a beginner’s mindset, shelve your go-to advice, scrap your preconceived notions and truly listen to what the social entrepreneur is doing. Meet them where they are, rather than asking them to meet you where you are, and offer advice and wisdom that helps them truly advance the mission they’re on.

2. This isn’t just people making soap in their backyard.

If your immediate vision of a social entrepreneur involves someone making soap in their backyard, it’s time to reframe your mental reference. Yes, there are lots of small businesses operating in this space, but there are also some bigtime companies that are truly changing the game. Two I suspect many of you have heard of are:

• Tom’s Shoes – you know those fashionable shoes with the Tom’s label everyone is wearing? That’s a social enterprise. They operate on a one-for-one model. For every one pair of shoes purchased, the company helps one person, either by providing shoes, sight, water, safe birth or

bullying prevention services to people in need.

• Warby Parker – international eyeglass sensation, Warby Parker, made famous in 2014 by being included on Oprah’s Favorite Things list, follows a similar model, giving one pair of glasses for every one pair purchased.

Do a quick search for global social enterprises and the list will both exhaust and astound you.

3. Please don’t ask them to fit into a drop-down menu or a check box.

From applying for loans to filling out award applications, the way we describe our work has been reduced to drop-down menus and check boxes. The deep and profound frustration my former business partner and I experienced when we tried to fit our social enterprise into a pre-formulated descriptor was nothing short of temper-inducing.

Governments, banks, award committees: you’re missing out on valuable candidates because they don’t fit the tidy descriptors you’ve created. Social entrepreneurs are blowing the doors off the norms. It’s time the infrastructure that supports them does the same.

4. Creating anything from scratch takes trial, error and time.

If you’ve ever tried to make anything from scratch – that is, without a pre-existing recipe – you’ll know the first couple of tries are likely to be a bust. The same is true for social entrepreneurs. Most of them are creating solutions, approaches, systems and products that haven’t previously existed.

Finding the sweet spot doesn’t happen overnight. And creating what’s in your mind’s eye takes time and a few tries. So, please, be patient with our social entrepreneurs, avoid the dismissive eye rolls and if you don’t get it, assume it’s you, not them.

Changing the model of business, necessitates…changing the model. We can’t ask a new model to fit into an old construct. That means everything from conversations to loan applications need to evolve to support what is now emerging as a very real alternative to the norm. Let’s get to it.

Colette O’Hara is a design thinker who unequivocally believes that when you change your perspective, you change your reality. She is a restriction-less lover of all things Nova Scotia and is currently the Chronicle Herald’s vice-president, market strategy and product design.